Hopes Grove Nurseries<\/a>\u2019, the first thing I notice is that I could plant a small grove (over 20), 4-5ft tall, bare-root Amelanchiers for under a hundred pounds, including delivery. The \u2018Snowy Mespilus\u2019 is one of those large shrubs \/ small trees which really should be planted everywhere. I don\u2019t think it has a single \u2018vice\u2019. It even responds to be treated as a hedge, if the \u2018tree option\u2019 won\u2019t fit into your garden.<\/p>\nThe season for obtaining and planting bare-rooted plants is from leaf fall to bud burst. Best not to leave it until the last minute as they certainly prefer to have a little winter rest, post replanting, rather than getting a rude spring awakening immediately after the trauma of being dug up, transported and stuffed into new ground. Having said that I have, on occasion, left it obscenely late to get bare-rooted hedging planted and it\u2019s still romped away in the spring.<\/p>\n
I like experimenting in the garden so when I planted my own \u2018native\u2019 hedge I added about five species of rose, to the standard mix, for more floral interest, colour and wild-food value. It\u2019s proved a great success and now, if I was planning another hedge, I think I\u2019d be very tempted to populate it with a large number of the more \u2018ornamental\u2019 trees and shrubs, available bare-root, as they are so, comparatively, cheap. If some don\u2019t survive the competition or fail to thrive as part of the mix, then it\u2019s not the end of the world. I find, in gardening, it is the unexpected successes that you remember and not the occasional disaster.<\/p>\n
Luckily for us, whoever planned the annual explosion of overconsumption that is Christmas, was thoughtful enough to make sure it takes place at perhaps the quietest time in the garden. Perhaps the only garden-related task that you\u2019ll have to do is to choose a present for a gardening relative or think of one that you\u2019d like yourself.<\/p>\n
I am extremely fortunate in that I either already possess any gardening tool that I could possibly need or my employers, being practical sorts, have ensured that the garden I work in is equipped with every piece of machinery required for modern horticultural excellence.<\/p>\n
This year I have been experimenting with a piece of equipment that I picked up years ago, for about a tenner, from a well-known online auction site. It\u2019s a soil steriliser and probably cost hundreds of pounds new but was being sold, by a horticultural group in the middle of nowhere, because they had no use for it. They hadn\u2019t even been plugged in!<\/p>\n
In those days I was privileged to have use of BBC hire cars, at licence fee payers expense, to roar all over the country in the arduous task of looking at lovely gardens before deciding whether we would deign to film them or not. The joy of this was that items listed as \u2018Pick Up Only\u2019, which were impossible to post, and with a very limited market, would sell for next to nothing and all I had to do was to combine collection with a \u2018recce\u2019 nearby. Bingo! Lovely soil steriliser, minimal cost, very little hassle.<\/p>\n
Anyway, this year has been the first in which I\u2019ve been able to make good use of it. I\u2019ve been using it to recycle old compost, after it\u2019s been used to grow tomatoes and the like, mixing it with some garden soil, running it through a \u2018Rota-Sieve\u2019 and then ensuring that it\u2019s sterile by a quick blast in the soil steriliser. The resulting \u2018compost\u2019 just needs the addition of a base mix of nutrients before being recycled for repotting shrubs\/perennials which like to have a bit of loam in their potting mix.<\/p>\n
That would be my Christmas present of choice if I didn\u2019t already have one. Failing that \u2018Groves\u2019 (still one of the best garden centre nurseries in the UK, I reckon) vouchers can\u2019t go wrong. Happy Christmas one and all.<\/p>\n
PS\u2014I am not connected in any way with any product or company mentioned\u2014they really are the places I go to, or products I choose, from my own experience. I cannot guarantee that they are the best out there, just the ones I prefer\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think we\u2019ve had a pretty \u2018standard\u2019 sort of year, for the UK, weatherwise if not politically. Every year will have periods that, in isolation, seem unusual but these events balance out over time. This autumn was pleasingly dry and warm, compared to some, but not in the way in which it will be remembered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-3068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-gardening","tag-russell-jordan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}